how to start apps with scheduled task before logging on or logging on automatically

Question

Ok, so there are a lot of questions around the theme of running scheduled tasks while logged on / off. I don't think that the specifics of my question re recovering the GUI have been asked. Please point out if so.

I'm basically trying to run a GUI app (Outlook 2003 as it happens but the question applies in general) using a scheduled task before I log on. This works fine, but when I log on there's no sign of the GUI as expected, just the outlook.exe process running. The question is: is there any way to get that GUI to start after I've logged on and the desktop is available, without restarting Outlook? Or is there just a better way to go about what i'm trying to do?

FYI - I'm trying to do this because where I work we have to restart our machines overnight, and outlook (for a variety of machine / exchange reasons) takes an age to start up as do a bunch of my other apps. I'm trying to save the time I spend logging on and waiting for outlook to start up / and sync with exchange (can take 10/15 mins) by having it start up and sync before I get to work and log in.

I guess an alternative is to automatically log in with my account before I arrive and leave the screen locked, and then start up the apps I want. Anyone know how to automate that without jimmying the registry to log straight in after reboot? (I want to control when it happens and keep the screen locked)

Thanks very much Ray

Answer 1

http://serverfault.com/questions/34937/is-it-possible-for-a-scheduled-task-to-perform-a-graphical-interactive-logon-or

Answer 2

Have you tried scheduling with the /interactive switch? Schedule tasks normally start in the background. Using the /interactive switch allows the window of the launched task to be shown, provided it has a GUI.

The following Technet link might provide some useful tidbits of information:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb726974.aspx

Hope this helps-